Adaptation and reception studies in life writing: staging Olga’s room in a London theater

Resumo

 Adaptation is usually situated at the margins of comparative studies of literature and media, despite its increasing practice in popular culture. Moreover, adaptation studies often approach producers as the main agents concerning issues of fidelity to original texts. It is a position that ironically reinforces a derivative condition that marginalizes adaptation. In an attempt to approximate adaptation to a more central position and to acknowledge interactions between producer-text-audience, this article aims to explore reception of a staged play by analysing online theater reviews for well-known English newspapers and magazines. The play Olga’s Room, originally written in German by Dea Loher in 1992, was translated a decade later and performed in an alternative London theater in 2013.